You have probably heard government school teachers (if that’s the right word) complaining of low pay. Said another way, they seem to believe their work is undervalued and that they deserved to be paid more.
This is an interesting suggestion, on at least two levels.
The first being that government school teachers, like government workers generally, are in the favorable (to themselves) position of being able to compel those they “serve” to pay them. An electrician or drywall hanger can only offer his services – and this gets us into the second thing, which is that in the free market, a person’s work is valued precisely in terms of what people are willing to pay for it.
Thus, an electrician or drywall hanger who wants more than people are willing to pay – or whose work doesn’t seem worth what he wants to be paid – finds that he does not get paid unless he either adjust his asking price or increases the value of his services.
Government workers – such as government school teachers – expect to be paid what they believe they are worth, which is invariably more than people are willing to pay. And this is why government must resort to force to pay its workers.
There is another factor at work, as well.
It is that government force enables some people who think the work done by government is valuable – to them – to force other who do not think it is to pay for it. This is how the endless rent you are forced to pay the government to restrain the government from evicting you from the house you paid for and so thought you owned gets serially increased. Other people who believe you have a responsibility to pay whatever they think is necessary to pay government school teachers’ salaries will vote to raise your assessment toward that end.
Imagine if electricians and drywall hangers were able to get you pay them in such a manner. You don’t need and electrician or drywall hanger at the moment. But your neighbor thinks there are people who do – and that the electricians and drywall hangers aren’t being paid “enough.” So they vote for a ballot item or a local politician who promises to make sure that electricians and drywall hangers are paid a “living wage,” as defined the electricians and drywall hangers who haven’t done any work for you and which you aren’t interested in paying for that reason. And because you don’t appreciate being extorted.
There is a deeper issue here as well. It can be viewed in the manner of a confession. Electricians and drywall hangers and everyone else who earns a living via the free exchange of goods and services offer value in exchange for the goods and services they offer. They do not need to use the government to force anyone to provide them with a “living wage.”
Only those who work for the government – and use the government to force people to pay them more than the market says they are worth – do.
The point is proved by juxtaposing the very good wages earned by private school teachers, tutors and so on. They do not need to strong-arm anyone to take their living. The reason for that has noting to do with their moral character, per se. Rather, it has to do with their credentials. In a private school, it is generally required that a teacher have expertise – and demonstrated competence in – the subject area they will be teaching. A math teacher is not the gym teacher. An English teacher is someone who knows grammar and proper construction. It is common for private school teachers to hold a Master’s degree in their subject area. It is typical for government school teachers to hold an undergraduate degree in “education.”
Many would be unemployable outside of government employment.
This is not to say that all government school teachers are poor teachers. There are some who are both qualified and competent, as well as interested. The issue is that the underlying system is not – and never can be, for the same reason that anything dependent upon the force of government rather than the willingness of people to freely exchange their money for whatever the good or service is will always and necessarily by generally shoddy and overpriced.
Also insolent – which is a function of government force.
Lately, parents of kids in government schools have been complaining about such abominations as the “instruction” of their kids in pathological mythologies such as sex fungibility – but what can they do about it, other than complain about it?
If government weren’t holding a gun to their heads with one hand and the other hand in their wallet, they could fire the individual “instructing” their kid in the fungibility of sex.
This is the power of the market, which is very different than the power of government in that all that happens in the case of the market when there is dissatisfaction or lack of interest is a parting of the ways, with no violence done to either party. But in the case of government, the party that does not wish to be a party to the “exchange” is forced to be a party to the exchange.
This is thuggery made legal.
No different in its basics than making it legal for a streetcorner squeegee man to smear a dirty rag across your windshield while you are waiting for the light to change and be in a position to legally force you to pay him a “living wage.”
So ends today’s lesson.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
My eBook about car buying (new and used) is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If that fails, email me at EPeters952@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy directly!
I am a public school teacher of 27 years. Much of what is written here is true. The system is wasteful beyond belief. Bureaucrats drawing big salaries are a significant burden on everyone involved. Ridiculous curricula are another problem. The three R’s are woefully neglected. Discipline is either non-existent or terribly ineffective. Teachers are so micromanaged that even the best become bogged down and disheartened by a system that is a complete failure. Added to all this is the general public’s overall apathy or lack of respect toward the value of what you do for a living. It gets harder and harder to go back each year. Why do I do it? Here is why. I try to reach individual children and teach them something valuable. When the gurus from the state come in to espouse their propaganda and ask me what I teach, my response is students. I do my damnedest to teach children instead of subjects. Teaching them how to learn and use logic and reason for a deeper understanding of whatever subject matter before them is deeply fulfilling. When those children return to you as adults and thank you for helping them that is very gratifying. I started out at a salary of $21,400 in 1995. This year my salary is $56,100. I have supplemented that with farm work, retail jobs, odd jobs, and being a gun smith. I have made a decent living and own my home and vehicles. I am debt free. Just this past weekend two former students contacted me and expressed their gratitude. It touched me deeply. I have a few years left in me to fight against the failures of the education system; a few years to reach some more kids and, hopefully, earn my keep by leading them into critical thought.
Thanks, Confed. What was baffling to me in my Facebook encounter with some teachers (described in my comment earlier in this thread) was how hostile they were toward anything resembling a free market in education. With the bloated bureaucracy, “ridiculous” curricula, micromanagement, etc., I would think they would love the idea of completely privatized schools where they could put their best ideas and methods to the test with consumers, unhampered by all of that nonsense. Why do you suppose that is? I’m afraid it’s because there are precious few teachers like you. Or maybe the good ones just don’t waste their time attacking people on Facebook.
Some teachers are indoctrinated, others are trapped in debt and need the job desperately so they play the game, and some are true believers in the system. I simply do not believe in their system. I do what I think is right for my students. I have always had a rebellious nature and like to poke at the bureaucrats and ideologues. It’s somewhat of a sport
The school system was set up to turn out compliant, obedient, conforming slaves for the slave market. When they herd everybody into the 15 min city prisons…a 3 mile across geographic zone in which you will be imprisoned, an electronic fenced outdoor penitentiary…they won’t bother with education you will just be programmed with 24/7 propaganda……The school system….a non education system consuming huge amounts of money for no positive results…
The justice system has been corrupted…common law and constitutional law are ignored…replaced by illegal laws with kangaroo courts…no more trial by jury by your peers….
The political system has been hijacked by the wef/ccp….they control all the G7 governments now….
The media has been taken over by the marxist/globalists….turned into their propaganda machine….
The financial system has been corrupted, replaced by a ponzi scheme fiat currency…it is looting the nation….bankruptcy is coming…
The medical system has been destroyed…a diverse choice of doctors and different types of medical care replaced by a monopoly given 100 years ago to allopathic medicine…. using poisonous drugs with horrible side effects…and no positive results against chronic diseases……allopathic medicine founded by a satanist called paracelsus…and marketed by a snake oil salesman and his son…the rockefellers….it consumes so much money it is bankrupting the nation… big pharma makes huge profits….
The family has been ripped apart, morality abolished…. replaced by marxist woke mental illness…..churches have been burnt down…replaced by the marxist/globalist new gods
The culture has been destroyed by the weaponization of migration….
What are they worth?
Not a good goddamn, to me, since my wife homeschools our children.
But we have to pay for them, all the same, and the piper’s bill is bigger every year.
It chaps my ass in a big way.
Me also, Marksj –
I have lived in my current home for about 20 years now. I have so far been made to pay the county something in the neighborhood of $40,000 in property taxes over that period. For “services” I never contracted for, do not use and have no interest in using. But because other people want and use them, I am obliged to “help” pay for them.
That $40k is also more like $60k in terms of inflation/buying power lost – not to mention the opportunity cost. If I had that money back, I could have paid for things I need, such as a greenhouse and solar/off-grid power. But my needs – using my own money – come second (and third) to those of people who didn’t earn my money but who do have the power to take it.
Question: What are Government Teachers Worth?
Answer: The title of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.
Cheers,
Jeremy
The slope started getting slippery when the feds got involved in desegregation. They gloss over the fact that southern schools probably were more integrated before the evil eugenicist Wilson kicked blacks out of the federal workforce. They only got worse when Carter created the Department of Education. Instead of making bad schools better, the feds dragged all the schools down to the lowest score. There’s really no justification for making schools so bad, and yet they portend that without central authorities planning the curriculum schools would be far, far worse.
I grew up in a school district that was really good. Most of the parents were professionals, engineers and the like, working for Bethlehem Steel, utility companies or in white collar positions. When I went to college I was surprised to see several of my high school text books in the book store. Most of the teachers didn’t really need to do much teaching, the kids and parents were highly motivated to get an education. My sister was in the National Honors Society and was in the top ten of her class. I, being dyslexic, didn’t do so well, but I got through it. When I had good teachers I learned. When I didn’t, I failed. I would have been better off just learning on my own.
ReadyK,
“I would have been better off just learning on my own.”
I think that was nearly always the case for me. Once taught to read, I should’ve just been let loose in the library for the rest of my youth. I would’ve learned much more.
I actually had the librarian convinced once, in 5th grade, that I was going in there at lunch for some school project. Instead of getting in rock fights with the other kids on the playground, I was educating myself in all manner of interesting subject matter (such as magnetic levitation, I remember). After a few weeks, however, the librarian learned I was just there to learn uncontrollably and avoid the useless dicking-about of lunchtime recess, and she kicked me out!
I spent a fair amount of time in libraries over the years. Instead of studying my English books, I spent hours reading Life magazines from the 1960s, at first because I was interested in the space program, but that led to discovering that the hippie movement was mostly a marketing scam to sell clothes and Vietnam wasn’t protested anywhere near as much as we were told. This was the 1980s and the boomers were celebrating the 20th anniversary of everything they did when they were my age, so in a way it was pretty topical.
David Adelman is good….he is fighting the school system…the marxist/globalists have destroyed it too…we need another million more like him to fight back against the globalist/marxists….
Don’t engage with the system
The People’s Lawyer, David Adelman
@ 4:04 in video unlearning and re educating all the things you have been told
@ 19:06 the difference between a sovereign and a slave
@ 20:24 in schools now you can’t say no and can’t ask why
@ 26:45 dealing with the school system
@ 47:15 we have had the social credit system for 150 years…the chinese just digitized it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyy1WDhv_F4
School is NOT designed to educate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt-0BPr7wAE
School is NOT designed to educate….in the video….
@ 20:55 john taylor gatto wrote The 7 lesson school teacher
@ 26:25 home schooled children out preform regular schooled children….home schooled children of poor parents who did poorly in school out perform all children, schooled or home schooled….
@ 30:11 schools were not set up to educate…..it is designed to train people in obedience, compliance, conformity…..
@ 31:50 the history of schools…you were programmed in schools to be a compliant slave..
@ 34:24 the controllers told people we are in control, you have to obey, us we are the rulers, don’t listen to your parents..
I might have told this story before, but a few years ago I asked on Facebook why, when I drive by the small rural elementary school that I attended 60 years ago, there are now at least 25 cars in the parking lot. When I was a student, on a typical school day there would be four. Five if the part-time janitor happened to be working. Enrollment now is slightly less than it was back then.
Oh man, it was like poking a hornet’s nest, with ed-yew-kay-tores piling on from far and wide, spouting their venom. No answers to my questions at all, just insults and predictable logic-free tripe. You don’t care, you hate kids, etc. etc. When I asked why they wouldn’t jump at the chance to work in a free-market environment where they would be free to put their best methods and ideas to the test with consumers, they screeched that I was greedy, even though I haven’t made one dollar in the teaching racket and they’ve all made hundreds of thousands, if not millions. I gave up when one of them called me a dog.
There’s the rub, you cannot have a rational discussion with these edu-cultists, you’re poking their golden goose. Your example of the elementary school shows the “featherbedding” perfectly.
I talked about the local situation of too many districts for so few schools with a lib gal pal of my biker bud – she claimed I just didn’t understand the unique needs of each district and basically she knew better since her late husband was a high school teacher in this “system”. These people are hopeless for reforming this mess and unfortunately they control it all now.
Yes, Sparkey, I didn’t expect a calm discussion about privatizing schools, nor was I looking for one. That was not why I asked the question. I assumed that a big reason that they now have dozens of employees for about 100 kids is that there are so many state and federal staffing requirements. I was genuinely curious, and thought somebody “in the know” would enlighten me. But not a peep. Just hysterical insults.
You can find salary info on openthebooks.com, what an eye opener!
Here in WA K thru 12 education runs state Gov including the state Supreme Court.
The featherbedding of this system is legendary- example our small (population) county in central WA has multiple districts where one would easily handle the small total of schools. Near me is the Thorp Schools, if you look on sat. view in maps you’ll see two buildings, four buses. This is the Thorp School District, the superintendent makes about $170,000 salary and there are a number of others there making north of $100k.
8 miles away is another school district repeating this salary structure. That super make 177k and I counted about 50 more making 100k or more, some lots more.
For what? One offspring of mine is a state university professor and gets to deal with the failings of this expensive K-12 system. At least half or more shouldn’t be in a four year university.
Same here Sparkey,
Most Superintendents make mid six figures, and the teachers, once they get some seniority, make six figure salaries allng with great benefits and retirements. All for a job that’s basically part-time, since they get the summer off, along with all the school vacations and holidays. The requirement here is 180 days of school, which is about half of 365, not counting weekends. Nice work if you can get it.
My neighbors were teachers. She taught fifth grade, he was a gym teacher. I know for a fact they made $100,000 each, it was a matter of public record. They retired a couple of years ago at age 55. Their combined government pension payments are easily $100,000 per annum.
If they live to be 95 they will get $100,000 from the state for the next 40 years — after having a combined income that paid them $1 million every five years.
It’s better than hitting the lottery.
Less and less people are actual homeowners. Either priced out of the marketplace by both artificial scarcity and now higher interest rates. Now apartment binge building is on the rise. The issue here is an attainder against the homeowner who pays property taxes and the apartment dweller (who pays the tax buried in his high rent) but does not physically pay the tax. So, then school levies come on the ballot these low-information voters tend to vote for because…someone else pays the bill….they think. Homeowners are being slowly taxed out of their homes by a tyranny of the majority taking their property. Back in the day when inflation was running wild (thanks Nixon and Johnson) people were being taxed out of their homes in CA. They passed prop-13 which staved off this confiscation for a while.
Just get your kids out of these propaganda schools asap is the only answer.
“In America we don’t want the government running Sunday school,
and we don’t need it running Monday school, either.”
– Marshall Fritz
Separate School and State:
https://schoolandstate.com/
Our local district has a budget of $133 million.
$91 million of which is from income & property taxes
7357 students is $18,000 per student. Does a 1st grader cost the same as college tuition?
that is $91 million sucked out of the local economy that could be spent on things people actually wanted.
My GF/wife is a school teacher, in a “government school”. Being a school in this rural area, you won’t find much of this “woke” education there, as the personnel are mostly freedom-loving country dwellers. Though, she’ll tell you that she’d never heard of so-called Critical Race Theory or some of this other poppycock being taught around her, even when she taught in city schools.
She teaches 2nd grade, and makes pretty decent money doing so. She thinks these teachers who always are complaining that they don’t make enough money are both prima donnas and probably doing it wrong, as well.
Where the hell else are you given 3 months paid vacation? Teachers complaining about their salaries most likely haven’t worked anywhere else. My wife worked many jobs before becoming a teacher, and therefore has a good frame of reference.
She also agrees with me, in that education shouldn’t be funded by people simply because they own land. Having a kid is a solely the responsibility of the parents. There’s no reason I should pay your mortgage or car payment, either! Just because I own land doesn’t mean I owe anyone so much as a bag of dog food, let alone an education for their kids.
3 Months paid vacation. Some districts pay that out in a lump sum at the end of the school year too. And don’t forget a pension, even after a few years on the job. A real guaranteed pension, not a 401(k) that is subject to the whims of “the market.” That pension fund manager can do things that your 401(k) manager cannot, like short stocks, get board seats and get bailouts from taxpayers when they still somehow manage to screw up.
ReadyK,
Yep! They could do that, but my GF opts for getting a steady paycheck, lest she get a big check at the end of the year, and says “Wheee! I’m rich!”, and then is asking me for money a month later.
And yes, there is a matching retirement plan of some kind. I forget the details, but it is definitely better than my 401(k).
When you have a job in government and all you have to do is draw a paycheck every two weeks and not have to worry about where it is coming from, you are not a capitalist, you are a collectivist. You’re collecting what others are providing, happens to be money.
Where do you think the money comes from?
Saw a pdf of the salaries of all teachers in a school district, it’s been a few years ago. Teachers are paid plenty, one married couple was drawing two salaries. The pdf mysteriously disappeared. Not the public’s business to know anything like that.
Have good clothes and talk all day, voila, you’re a teacher. Not to stereotype them, but you can. You have to be able to read words and add numbers, a lot of them.
You will have sufficient housing, an automobile and all sorts of toys to make your life better than most.
You will then have plenty of time on weekends and days off to complain about why you need more at the expense of others.
June, July and August for teachers is play time. No time to complain then, that’s no fun. You collect three more monthly payments while you are at the lake.
You are not adding value to anything, you are taking from those who are forced to pay and are also forced to produce, if they don’t, the powers that be make life miserable.
During the Great Depression, if you were a school teacher, usually women, and you married, you had to give up your teaching position so another teacher could have the teaching job.
If you want to hear complaining, listen to farmers. You never hear the end of it. It starts with the weather then never ends about how bad everything is. har
NOTHING!
Summers off. Excellent benefits. Early retirement. Paid for doing nothing during COVID. Complain constantly about their low pay.
Not worth the hide wrapped around their ass.
I would definitely say public school teachers have a negative net worth, as they teach falsehoods, communist propaganda, and they most definitely teach sexual degeneracy.
Public school teachers are on the front line of societal destruction – assaulting sanity, traditional values, sowing seeds of contempt, etc.
Thus paying them anything is utter stupidity and suicidal. They should all be in prison or at the gulag pounding rocks.
Where I live, in Communist Oregon, every public school has big BLACK LIVES MATTER signs everywhere. They are blatantly promoting a political agenda, when schools should be politically neutral.
If I was wealthy and influencial I would hire a gaggle of Jewish lawyers and sue the shit out of them for their single sided BLM promotion. LOLROFL
I’ve dipped my toes into school board politics in my local school, and a libertarian friend actually got on the school board as a trustee for a while. The system is set up all wrong to incentivize teachers to do a good job, to the point where it sucks the joy of teaching out of the good ones.
In our school district, your pay is based on seniority, whether you are a teacher or an administrator. My friend pushed really hard for merit based pay, but the teachers union is completely against that, because they promise their members that they’ll be paid more the longer they stick around. Imagine what this happens to the fresh, young teachers. They see these fat old cows sitting on their butts, cows that have first choice as to the classes they will teach, and no matter how hard the good teachers work, they will not see a bonus or any reward. Some people have the work ethic to push hard in this environment, others don’t, and they accumulate seniority all the same.
Senior teachers get paid a lot, somewhere in the $120k-$140k range in my school district, and their benefits and pension package is simply stunning. This is an $200k job once benefits are factored in. However, new teachers and substitutes (which is the only path to full time) are paid very poorly. Substitutes make just above minimum wage, and they have to go through years of of substitute teaching before some teacher retires and they’re first in line for that spot. Substitute teachers have to be available to substitute within a day’s notice, but they’re not guaranteed to have any work, and they’re paid hourly, but are required to work if called, so it means that they can’t work another job.
Administrators get paid way too much and there are too many of them relative to the teachers. In the local schools, the ratio isn’t too bad, maybe 1 admin for 4 teachers, but as you go up to higher levels of the organization, the admin count explodes, so on net, it’s somewhere near 1-1.
All work on the facilities is stunningly expensive. Local prevailing wage laws make the minimum you can pay contractors about $60/hr, but the real number is two or three times that, since you are required to use union labor, so you pay one guy to work, one guy to supervise, and one guy to be in charge of safety (sit on his ass). One thing I was familiar with is that an $500k roof at market rate cost about $4,000,000 on a school, so eight times market rate. As someone on the board, you have no ability to pay market rate for the roof, because of all the city and district requirements. Even better – if a woman or minority owned business issues a proposal for that roof, you discount it when considering offers, so they could bid $5M and come out cheaper than an $4M offer and you are, by law, required to accept the more expensive one.
I could go on, but it’s so broken. The public school attitude infects local private schools too, so that if the public system is awful and entitled, so will the local private schools, as is the case in our area as well.
I know it’s bad but then I see your comment about how the sausage, so to speak, is actually made and it just floors me.
You made some really good points OL. I think school boards are one place we begin to right the ship. Even though honest people rarely if ever get selected to the boards. If they do, the dis-honest majority keeps them in check.
Way back in the 90s, many school boards started this nonsense of agreeing to all agree. It was some kind of idea designed to show a unified front, even as it discouraged spirited debate. School boards by their nature are one of the most responsive levels of Government. They all live nearby, they eat at the same restaurants, frequent the same theaters and bars. In short if a groundswell of parents want something, it wouldn’t be hard to get in the board members faces and make it reality.
The elephant in the room is the administration. I’d say without fail you could go through most school districts of a certain size, pull all the administrators, assistants, and associated fluffers out, line them up against the wall, go down the line and arbitrarily fire every tenth one. You could do this for a year and I doubt anyone would notice any decrease in the quality of their product. If used on a long enough timeline I’m sure at some point you might begin to see some improvement.
Hi Norman,
I would have to disagree about the school board being an avenue for positive change. They are like all “representative democracy” bodies in that they can never truly represent all of the people who voted for them, let alone the ones who didn’t.
And they are a source of never-ending squabbles. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear about a big brouhaha at a school board meeting somewhere. There is a reason why politicians always say they will fight for this, fight for that, fight for you, fight for me. Everything in politics is a fight.
The core problem is that government schools do not have to earn a profit to stay “in business.” The solution, then, is complete privatization. Remove the ability for them to tax anybody. If they want to stick around and try to satisfy the preferences of consumers as for-profit or non-profit entities, fine.
Then as far as customers are concerned, you pick what you want, I pick what I want, and we pay for it ourselves. It is the only way to achieve excellence – and peace.
Hey Roland,
You are correct in your first two sentences. What we have now, imo is taxation without representation. I’d bet most kids these days are from parents that take way more than they contribute by way of the taxman. The only solution we ever hear is more, more, more.
I don’t think education should necessarily have to show a profit. But children should damn well be able to read, write, do basic business math, and accounting to a 10th grade level, (Circa 70s 10th grade level, not the current thing). I am a great believer in choice. If it were applied universally, far and wide, the problem would fix itself in short order..
Although they sometimes do a good job of pretending to fight, people have caught on to the politicians grift. Many of the teachers I see on the left, are also wannabe politicians. They go along with most anything the union tells them. Most of the ones from ‘Education Colleges’ have Never been in the private sector. The summer they spent making sandwiches at subway don’t count.
More to the point of my previous comment School boards, as well as city councils, and county commissions are the only places we have any power. They will listen if enough of us get in their grill, As the leftoids say, ‘put a body on em.’ I don’t advocate for violence, but having representation thats accountable probably requiems some intimidation and starts at the lowest levels. We have no chance of being heard by the state and feds, unless and until we all band together in mass work/buying stoppages.
Yes, Norman, I agree that given the current crappy system, the chances of having your preferences satisfied are better locally, where you are more likely to know the supposed representative – or at least know where he lives.
Hi Roland,
I agree with you. The problem here, fundamentally, is the school board represents… the school. The interests of those involved. I have no interest in government schools. I do not wish to be involved in any way – including financially. It is my position that parents are responsible for the education of their children – not anyone else. Just the same as they are responsible for feeding and clothing them. If other people are responsible for educating them, then why not also feeding and clothing and housing them, too?
Mind, I like kids. That is not the issue – though Leftists use that greasy emotional blackmailing tactic. The issue is whether it’s right to strong-arm rob people to pay for the education of other people’s kids in a government school. I say it isn’t.
As if they were actually getting an education in government schools, instead of constant indoctrination against their parents.
“If other people are responsible for educating them, then why not also feeding and clothing and housing them, too?”
Exactly, Eric. The argument always is that education is too important to leave to the vagaries of the market and greedy capitalists. But if importance is the criterion, isn’t eating more important to a child than going to school? He can survive a long time without schooling, but will die pretty darned quickly if he doesn’t eat. So why don’t we have grocery districts where parents – regardless of means – can pick up free food for the kids five days a week?
When I make that argument, Eric, I get the “well, someone paid for your education somewhere along the way, so now it’s your turn”. Never mind I spent most of my childhood in what was then-Soviet Russia, and did not see much of U.S. schools, so that argument does not fly too well.
Public school teachers are no different than any other class of govt employee in that they are by and large over compensated, under worked, lazy, and most importantly incompetent & unqualified to teach. How is it the public allows someone who in most cases has no real world experience of working in the private sector and therefore no first hand knowledge of how real life functions? Most teachers go right into teaching soon after obtaining their useless Anthropology degree and therefore can’t possibly have enough practical knowledge & experience. So tell me, “where’s the beef!” ?
I’m a big believer in the phrase, “experience is the best teacher.” Experience in life has been a formula for separating the skilled from the unskilled and the competent from the incompetent. The best way to know how things really work is to work in the private sector. Would you really want someone who’s a neophyte in the ways of the world teaching your kid? But wait, it gets even worse. Teachers are constantly being ground down mentally by the system; the protocols and the unbending rules & regulations imposed on them by administrators & the hierarchy. And we all know what that means. Adding it all up is a guarantee for failure.
So what’s the solution to this mess? You know the answer to that, there’s only one solution: Private Education.
Mandatory public education is the longest running, and most successful psyop in human history. For God’s sake, those that instituted it openly said their goal was to create a submissive, obedient, and docile workforce. Any claim that they were better in the past is coincidental. The psyop just hadn’t realized its full potential yet. Had to get the teachers indoctrinated before going to work on the kids. Gotten to a point now where they think they own the kids.
“We need more pay”, and “we need smaller classes”. Is that not the goal of everyone who works for a living? More pay for less work? What makes them think they are “special”?
Fairly commonly understood, that an Education major is an escape route when you are failing at your preferred major. In other words, the worst. And it shows. Thank God I was able to convince my son and my daughter in law that no sacrifice was too great to home school my grand children. My grandson had behavioral issues when he was in public school. Gone now.
They taught me to read, write, and do basic math. The rest I learned on my own after graduating in 1972.
The capable are bored out of their minds, while the incapable are overwhelmed in cookie cutter public education.
I have a saying: “In the war against the human mind, the public school teacher is the grunt.”
Given that government schools are a thing, government school teachers should make what an E1 in the army makes. 23,011.20 per year. Their actual worth, of course, is zero, so they are still ripping us off.
https://www.goarmy.com/benefits/while-you-serve/money-pay.html
Homeowners are forced to pay for schools whether they have children or not. Those of us with no children pay too. And we wouldn’t send our children to leftist indoctrination camps (aka public schools) if we had children.
In my youth, growing up in a rural area, the only choice was a public school. Religious schools were only for additional Saturday or Sunday religious teaching.
But there were no politics in school (1960s) where I grew up — 90 miles NW of Manhattan. So no leftist indoctrination. I have no idea what the politics of my K-12 teachers were.
Electricians and drywall hangers can rip off people too.
People rarely know how to repair anything, or how it should be done, or what a repair ought to cost. Not just women. Men too.
Especially vulnerable are single women who live in nice neighborhoods, such as friends of ours. They get ridiculously high quotes. We call them “Birmingham quotes”, named after a nearby wealthy town. The tradesmen often claim the homeowner is in danger, hoping to get a very profitable job.
My Dad was an electrician, so I learned enough to do all the electrical work around my home. He also did every other blue-collar job around the house, except mowing the lawn and shoveling snow — that was my job. I doubt if there are many jacks of all trades around these days. Too many pencil pushers now.
My wife is unusually good at painting. She painted the entire exterior and interior of our ranch style home the after getting ridiculously high quotes. We had hired others the first time the home was painted — a bunch or Russians who did great work at a reasonable price, because they just starting a business and hoping for referrals. They were just learning English too.
Recently the wife repaired some large holes in a plasterboard wall torn up by our plumber fixing a leak. The plasterboard expert gave us a quote for $400.
I told the wife maybe we should pay because our 1955 5/8″ home plasterboard was thicker than the current 2023 5/8″ plasterboard. That looked like trouble. She looked the repair up on the internet, did the work herself with $8 of plasterboard and popsicle sticks as shims. I ate the popsicles and watched in amazement.
Everyone who might be a “Jack of all trades” is currently diagnosed with ADHD and medicated into becoming a zombie.
The truth is always funny in today’s bizarro world.
I was a deprived child — no medications except a One a Day vitamin pill. I was never allowed to be a victim, or to claim that my faults were not my fault. Everything I did wrong was my fault. When I failed typing and French in the seventh grade, I was declared to be “stupid”. When I told the guidance counselor in the ninth grade that I wanted to be “A garbageman, because there will always be garbage”, there was no laughing at my joke — I was declared to be a juvenile delinquent and my parents were called in for an emergency meeting.
If I had ever revealed to anyone that I really wanted to be a girl, the parents would have sent me to a lunatic asylum.
Richard, your stories are great.
The garbage men are no laughing matter, Richard, and when I see the WM (waste management) truck out my way, I thank them. Remember the time when the New York City garbage workers went on strike years ago, because they did not get the raise they were asking for? Yeah, it did not take long for the city (and the imbeciles who run that place who said “no”) to figure out just how important those garbage men were, after their trash started piling up, because no one was there to pick it up for them. The way I see it, the trash man, the laundry person, and the house keeper (such as at a hotel or hospital) are invisible and considered lowest in society until they are not there. Only then, does one realize their importance. I think your working in such a field would have been a fine job, and who knows who you would have met (and the pets who greet you, too, ha ha) along the way.
“Homeowners are forced to pay for schools whether they have children or not.”
And as is the case with my son’s family, have children but do not send them to government indoctrination camps.
There should be a discount for the childless.
At the height of COVID hysteria, it was discovered that the CDC’s “guidelines” for reopening schools and forcing kids to wear face masks all day in school was from, of all things, a teachers’ union…..however, there was NO science whatsoever behind such guidelines. Instead, these “guidelines” damaged countless children, likely for YEARS to come.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/teachers-union-collaborated-with-cdc-on-school-reopening-emails/
While in Florida last week, I had to deal with the mess that the National Association of School Boards created at the Orlando convention center with their conference by scheduling Janelle James from “Abbott Elementary” to deliver their key note on Saturday morning.
James is an actress, not an educator, but that didn’t matter. Not that anyone else in that room really makes a difference either, but, heck, it wasn’t their money paying for anything.
I’ve long said any academic & professional success I’ve had over the decades is in spite of the government schools, not because of them. There’s a small handful of teachers that I liked / respected but I don’t credit them with anything beyond their duties. I sure as hell don’t wax sentimental over my own public school years. I honestly can’t think of any value added.
This guy does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLWUGumz1dI
He’s quite sincere and I’m happy for him. We just had different experiences, I reckon.
In public school there was not one teacher we would consider to be a role model. It was our ‘Those who can’t do anything, teach others”, point of view.
We tried to follow our high school teachers after graduation to see if any had moved into the private sector and accomplished something big. To our amazement, the one teacher who did that was our least favorite high school teacher. A man who considered teaching high school English to be a waste of his great talent: Writing novels. After he tortured high school students for years, he entered the private sector and was a big success as a novelist. We couldn’t believe it. Mr. Neiderman, the worst teacher in our high school, and the meanest, was the greatest success in the private sector. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Neiderman
I came from an ostensibly good system. The teachers were older school, and while liberal, did give a crap if their kids learned something. I graduated being able to read, write and do almost college level math. The teachers I had imparted basic knowledge and information very well. I doubt I could have absorbed all of that on my own.
The problem is that is rare in this system. Kids need to be educated, but how is the question. If the system was fair and equitable, you could fund a system with exclusively sales taxes instead of threatening people’s property every year with the yearly bill. That’s probably a reasonable compromise.
Back when the US was perceived as a world leader and world power, states should have established this as a minimum for achievement.
1. 6 years of foreign language training. If we were to be the world’s leader, our kids should speak the languages of the world in addition to their own. This ‘english only” crap is what led to the stupidification of America (yes, that’s a made up word”
2. A minimum of 4 years continuous math in high school. No more of this bullshit of only taking two years and barely getting through algebra
3. A minimum of 4 years of American and world history. You gotta know where you come from and what your enemies and friends are/were up to.
4. A minimum of 4 years of science class. Biology, Chemistry, Physics and an elective of electronics, mechanical skills
5. A minimum of 1 year of business and economics class. 1 year of electives – money and banking or marketing
6. English and expository writing 4 years.
7. 1 year minimum of computer technology.
8. Remove Sex Ed and family planning from the classrooms.
9. No more social studies type classes.
Make these little bastards learn something. Encourage adults to get up to speed as well.
This what would have been good for a world leading country to do for its kids. Make it hard. Increase the risk and reward.
The problem is that beginning in the early 1960’s we began to get soft. If you watch old episodes of “Leave it to Beaver” you see what caused the boom generation to become the self righteous, yet permissive generation with their kids. It was bullshit. The 50’s and early 1960’s were characterized by “sock hops” and “soda fountains” and a deemphasis on actual learning. It accelerated in the early 1970’s through today. By the 1970’s it was decadant dances and the 1980’s was the beginning of tolerating that gay shit.
If a school system won’t produce a circiculum that emphasizes what I put up there, its time to shut the whole shit show shooting match down. I’m sick of paying taxes to 1. educated a bunch of dumb assed kids and 2. Have parents clog up roads picking up their damned kids in their crossovers. Charge a parent $5.00 every time their damned kid doesn’t ride the bus or walk.
The only way we fix public education is to have the money follow the student.
In deep blue states, this will never happen, however in red states there is advancing political debate on allowing such. It would be a game changer for the better. Make the public schools compete, like we all do, every day. Not sure if there are currently states that do this or not.
It’s an old idea in some quarters called “vouchers.” If you don’t like your local gov school you can pick a “better” one and use your tax voucher to go there. I know people who live in a place that doesn’t offer that so they rent an apartment in another nearby jurisdiction to send their kids to that area’s so-called better school. Their kids don’t really impress me. In the end, it’s still gov school.
Yes, but the voucher idea is bad, too, since the govenrment can then set stipulations on what will be required and taught to receive the money. It is similar to the promise to “repeal and replace” obamacare.
The real solution is to gut the whole enterprise from the federal level to the local level. I’m sick of paying taxes to a government that would like to see me dead.
Why even have public education or a voucher program? It is not the state’s job to handle our children’s education, but that of the parents. Honestly, it would be better for Johnny and Susie to stay home and work on the homestead than the garbage they are being taught in the school systems (even private ones).
Many will disagree with me, but I believe the best schooling is unschooling. Let children learn at their own pace and dive into what they are interested in. Most children do not learn best sitting in a jail cell all day. What no bullying? No sex education? No indoctrination of left wing ideology? I wonder how much happier children will be when they don’t have to compare themselves to their peers and learn at their own natural pace.
I agree completely and walk the walk with my own. It’s more than taxes and education, though. Like the degree to which some people have kids and immediately pawn them off to others, starting with nannies and daycare as early as 2-3 years old then for 12 years of gov school. Another thing is when gov’t schools closed in my area during the renamed flu scam, they had to set up a location at the civic center for the kids to still be able to pick up their 3 MEALS a day from the gov’t that they normally got at school. Did you know you were paying for that? WTF! The gov’t is the family to some folks and you bet the individuals that insinuate themselves into it for political reasons like it that way. Scary.
Hi FDS,
And we wonder why socialism is so successful? We can thank Truman for the National School Lunch Program. I wonder how children survived prior to that? That is the problem with most government programs. I can sympathize with a hungry child. No sane adult wants any child hungry. The government takes an issue such as malnutrition, creates a three letter agency for it, and the next thing we know it is a massive, fraudulent, pork barreled laden program which everyone refuses to audit and cut.
It has been 35 years since I have seen the inside of an elementary school, but I remember forgetting my lunch once or twice. I was allowed to “charge” the meal and the teacher would send home a bill for my lunch tab…maybe $.55. I would sneak into my father’s closet and dig through his coins that he kept in a shoe box on the floor and return the $.55 to the teacher the next day. There was no free lunch and that was what we were taught. Of course, one could hold me accountable for stealing my father’s change. 🙂